Rammstein poems by Mark Allinson:

Don't Freuden the Children

I play my Rammstein loud to Freud.

He stands there, hand on hip,
gold-chain looped into fob,

the cigar with the wet end waiting
for the next draw.

The sheer volume of sound
phases him, but he doesn't let on,

having practised the no-response face
since that first patient said
"motherfucker".

He listens and he knows that Beethoven,
Wagner, Mahler, if they had seen
what he had seen of the human soul

and what he knew was coming

would have plugged in
like these boys
to capture the enormous pounding
beauty of such pain.

He understands the German lyrics
and knows their origin
in the Black Forest
of das alte leid.

But most of all he recognises his own
beautiful melody lines, riding high and pure
above the black rumble of chaos.

My Music

It has enough
cold fury to disturb
the smugly dead

and their preference
for the innocent melodies
of the spirit's denial.

They wince if they hear it,
and wish that hell
was never imagined.

It has steeled riffs and rhythms
unbreakable as the sinews
binding us to the gods.

These are the sounds
that allow me to be
assured life loves me.

And when those power chords
slash my clouds like summer lightning
I become awake, just like the sea.

On the Music of Rammstein

From dungeons ooze fragrant mists
of forest rot and mushroom sweat.

Stalactites of transparent steel
drip puddles of bright mercury.

The walls are straight and very strong
but seethe with fruit of busy vines.

When Wotan whispers a cool word
rock atomises to hot dust

and fills the halls of Valhalla
with the perfume of underworld.

When the wind blows in from the East
it brings the roar of ice-splinters

tumbling down Black Mountain
like an avalanche of razors.

Mark Allinson